I am overjoyed to see that you are starting to reach your goal. I've tried the celtic hearts option and I keep getting booted out. Also I like the sense of community created by Highlander. I would definitely pay to suscribe! I have already donated and will again. I would like to volunteer if you find a way for us to do so. After years of loving celtic music and history, I am just now exploring the celtic community, online & locally. I thought I'd check out a local bar called McSwiggins (in Bradenton, FL - does anyone know of it?). If they have a bulletin board do you have anything to post?

We are now seriously looking at live365 as being our sole provider of streaming services for the immediate future.

Based on our research, it would cost $4,000 + a year between licenses and royalty payments. (that is a conservative low estimate - based on the IRS giving us tax exempt status). That would be to continue our current state of the station as it is right now. If we obtain Royalty releases from all of the artists then the cost would be around $700 a year, but this would take a huge effort of reviewing 300+ albums; documenting the addresses, email, and a place to store all of the releases. If an artist does not sign the release, we could not play their music. And the job of rearranging/sorting 5000+ songs and slowly re-indexing the music back into the broadcast is really more than we could possible do. We would not be back online for 3 months min. (if at all), and even then our collection would be crippled to how many artists respond.

Whereas the live365 route, we could be back online within days with all of the songs you have come to know and love intact. Our website will still function the way it has and we can continue to expand it. They cover all licenses fees and royalty payments. It's just a sure bet that when we use the donations, we are providing the best value and safest route for continue broadcasting. Plus we will be able to purchase 1 year of broadcast at a discount, although the total cost for these accounts will exceed our current donations.

Thats where we stand now. If we go through live365, we could be back up this weekend!

I'd like to thank Paul, the highlanderradio is back on live365though there's a minute of announcement, it's okay for mesince highlanderradio looks like non-profit Celtic communitiy, the license fee may be less (like NPR)

We are now seriously looking at live365 as being our sole provider of streaming services for the immediate future.

Based on our research, it would cost $4,000 + a year between licenses and royalty payments. (that is a conservative low estimate - based on the IRS giving us tax exempt status). That would be to continue our current state of the station as it is right now. If we obtain Royalty releases from all of the artists then the cost would be around $700 a year, but this would take a huge effort of reviewing 300+ albums; documenting the addresses, email, and a place to store all of the releases. If an artist does not sign the release, we could not play their music. And the job of rearranging/sorting 5000+ songs and slowly re-indexing the music back into the broadcast is really more than we could possible do. We would not be back online for 3 months min. (if at all), and even then our collection would be crippled to how many artists respond.

Whereas the live365 route, we could be back online within days with all of the songs you have come to know and love intact. Our website will still function the way it has and we can continue to expand it. They cover all licenses fees and royalty payments. It's just a sure bet that when we use the donations, we are providing the best value and safest route for continue broadcasting. Plus we will be able to purchase 1 year of broadcast at a discount, although the total cost for these accounts will exceed our current donations.

Thats where we stand now. If we go through live365, we could be back up this weekend!

Paul and Shari,Thank you both so much for all that you're doing for us to keep this wonderful station going!! I'll give 365 a try, though I've tried it before and kept getting timed out. I don't mind commercials every so often as long as it helps keep Highlander Radio going. I just let my attention wander during those ads.

You've said that current donations don't cover all the costs you'll have. How close are you to that point? I'd be willing to kick in a bit more, if that will help. You do provide an invaluable service to all of us, but also to the artists themselves. I suspect that they're not the ones who'll benefit from all this, though, as others have pointed out. Still, I have bought several cds as a result of listening to the music you've provided, and have told friends and family about this station. The artists are getting more recognition and listeners because of all that you've done for us. It's a royal shame that you can't charge their record companies for the exposure service that you've given them!! I wish there was a way we could buy directly from the artists themselves. Their companies are alienating the very people they want to sell to!

Please keep trying. Let us know how we can help. Again, a huge Thank You to both of you for all that you're doing!!

Dreamer1

P.S. There was some mention of working in tandem with Amazon and other such companies to track album sales from Highlander Radio. Is that a viable option to help reduce some of these new costs?

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'Hope guides me. It is what gets me through the day, and especially the night.' -- A Knight's Tale "I talk to you as I talk to my own soul...and, Sassenach,” he whispered, “your face is my heart.” -- Jamie Fraser, "Dragonfly In Amber" by Diana Gabaldon @Dremnghrt on Twitter, Dreamnghrt on tumblr - come say Hi!

Ok....argh......ah.....ah.....ah.....I can not compose myself.....this is horrible. I wish I was not so broke I would donate to help. I listen to this station when I am at work. It makes the day go so faster. I would never have learned about all these wonderful groups like Barlyjuice and Wicked Tinkers if not for this station.

First, thanks for all of the wonderful donations! Raising $453 to pay for 1 year of streaming is an incredible accomplishment by our listeners. I was really surprised by the tremendous response. We are now trying to purchase 1 years worth of streaming for a modem account (32kps), a special streaming account for special events and a new hosting provider for faster loading of our website. The donation account is looking very good as we have a little over $200 in there. Donations are always appreciated because the cost of keeping the servers going, (as an example the power supply blew yesterday in one of them - $29), a dedicated DSL-T1 line and IP address ($64.95 a month), and for expanding the website is a constant drain. For example, we needed a photo editing program to batch resize all of the album covers ($15). So, thank you very much! And please, while we appreciate donations very much, if it is a drain to provide us with a donation - don't worry about it! We receive atleast a few donations regularly every few weeks and I am sure these will continue to support the site.

Ok, to answer some of the questions:

Yes, you will still be able to make live request through our website and it will play on live365. We may only make this option available to broadband stream.

We need to develop a plan to contact artists and get waivers. But with live365 we do not as we are now officiallly licensed. Over the course of the next year we will develope that piece of the station. We have to build stuff to track it, keep it, maintain it, etc. I tend to think that for right now, we will use our time to build the site to make it even better, but the long term goal is for us to become an independent broadcaster paying for all fees ourselves and being completely in complaince with the rules and laws.

Please give us a few days to get the site and broadcast running again. We have to make alot of changes, but hopefully by the end of today the broadband stream will be back up with requests. I'll post a message in the news section.

Also, live365 has ways to support broadcasters. We have put some links on our frontpage to sign up for a preferred live365 account and to also make live365 your favorite station. We get a small kick back for this ($1.50 for a new account and pennies for favorites), but understand that the accounts are with live365 and you get access to all of their stations.

Oh, and right now there might be some issues with buffer on live365. I was reading last nite they were having some issues. Other broadbasters I have spoken to said that they have pretty much been trouble free for the past 2 years.

if it's possible to make it 20k realaudio (ra8, not mp3), this'll be betterby protocoluse tcp requires more upstream for surestreamudp, however, requires pretty little or even zero upstream from users, this is more GPRS-friendly (becoz GPRS has only 9k upstream)or employ 24k low-quality mp3 stream (mono) for modem and GPRS users

highlanderradio is one of 2 mp3 stream I usually listen (the other is wfuv.org, which plays Ceol na Gael, and Thistle and Shamrock weekend)